Tips to choose the best mobile app development framework in 2021

Introduction

Mobile app development has paved the way for digital transformation and is peaking across various categories. 

Whether retail, gaming, health & lifestyle, or any other application, you want your app to be unique and compelling. Therefore, it is essential that your mobile app should incorporate the right set of features and offer enhanced performance and an awesome customer experience. 

Today end users have a variety of digital products to choose from for serving their purposes. To stay ahead in this competition, your app needs to not only resonate with your target audience but also, outperform other mobile apps in that domain. This requires seasoned mobile app developers and the right mobile app development framework and tools for your mobile app development. 

Facts & Figures

1. According to a report by eMarketer, smartphone users are predicted to use the mobile internet for almost 4 hours/day, and out of which 88% is spent on mobile apps. This projects the importance of custom and responsive mobile app development for your business.

2. A recent report by Statista proved that Android and iOS app development are critical to get global reach for your business. In June 2020, there were 2.96 million apps published in the Google Play Store whereas the Apple App Store has 4.37 million iOS apps published as of July 2020.

3. Another report by Statista highlights that on average 1,00,000 Android apps are released every month as it is cheaper and easier to launch.

4. A study by 42Matters predicted that almost 30,000 iOS apps are released every month in the Apple App Store.

5. The most popular category of apps in the Apple App store is gaming apps with 25% in this category as per reports by Statista.

Who can be benefitted from this blog?

This blog is for all those readers who have got a great idea about a mobile app but are getting confused with the available options in the pool of frameworks. This blog is for:

• An individual who is looking to get into mobile app development
• A mobile app developer looking to start with some other framework for a particular project
• A team member who is on a project and looking for some guidance for his project
• An enterprise from another domain looking to increase its global reach through a mobile app
• A startup looking for building its brand and increase its brand presence through global reach

As a business owner, you want to have the best fit for your mobile app development that would cater to all your present and future requirements. 

Different types of mobile apps

Mobile apps are categorized as:

Native Apps- These are developed for specific platforms such as iOS and Android, and leverages the features of the device like the phone Camera, GPS, etc.

Web Apps- These functions via the browsers

Hybrid Apps- These apps are a combination of web and native apps and are built using Native app framework and Hybrid app framework

Top 7 to-dos while choosing the best mobile app development framework

While choosing the best mobile app development framework for developing an ideal mobile app for your business, you need to be aware of these 7 major factors:

Research

If you want to develop a top-notch business mobile app that will compete with the existing ones, you need to have a brief understanding of the market you are targeting, the demands of modern consumers, and the mobile app trends. 

• Market Research: An in-depth market research will help you to give useful insights about similar apps that are already in the market, how they are solving the problems of the customers and the strategies your competitors are using to excel. 
• Customer demands: Your customers decide the fate of your mobile app. As your business is customer-centric, it is essential to develop a mobile app that focuses on touching their pain-points, focusing on the present and future demands, and provide an enhanced user experience. This will help you to optimize your app as per your consumer demands from the beginning of the development process.
• Mobile app trends: You need to be aware of the top mobile app development trends in the market. This will help you to plan and strategize your app development for a robust and feature-rich outcome. 

Identify the right set of audience

Identifying the right set of audience is crucial in the mobile app development process. The fate of your mobile app depends on the target audience. This set of target audience that you are focusing on will play a major role in the application development process and for app expansion and growth.

To get a clear picture of how to identify the right set of audience, you can create a questionnaire like:

• Who will use my application? This will mainly include industry, location, demographics, psychographics 
• What are the major pain points that my mobile app will be solving?
• How will my mobile app add value to their lives?
• A major motivation to use your mobile app

These kinds of questions will help you to meet customer expectations that would result in generating more revenue.

Platforms

The most popular mobile operating systems are Android, iOS, Windows, Blackberry, Firefox, and Sailfish. To excel in the mobile market, it is essential to keep in mind that mobile app development focuses on the Mobile OS that the enterprise is planning to release its product on. Most organizations target Android and iOS platforms for their business due to their major market share.

To choose the best platform for your mobile application, you need to keep in mind:

• The app brand
• The target audience
• The features
• The pricing 

Once this is sorted, you need to choose the mobile app development methodology, i.e. whether you want to go for cross-platform app development, hybrid app development, or native app development. Native app development offers a wide suite of advantages but comes at a good cost.

Some organizations opt for cross-platform app development to penetrate deeper into the markets. Cross-platform app development hosts some top cross-platform mobile app development frameworks that help you to get a compelling mobile app for both Android and iOS on variable devices. Cross-platform apps offer an engaging experience with your business across various platforms and devices at any time. 

Many businesses prefer native mobile app development. With native mobile apps, you get an enhanced and faster app development process and consistency. Native apps help to leverage the complete benefits of the platform you’re planning to develop an app for. Native apps enable direct access of the device hardware such as GPS, camera, microphone, etc., for optimal user experience. 

Features 

Whether Android or iOS app, the functionalities work differently for both platforms. When you opt for cross-platform app development, the device-specific features become extremely crucial for your mobile app to run your app seamlessly. 

Your mobile app should have the following features:

• Simplicity- Avoid difficult navigation of your app so that your customers can access information quickly and easily.
• Speed- Your app should load faster as slow loading pages generates a lot of frustration.
• Better image resolution- To make your user experience worth, you need high-definition and detailed images. In addition to this, you need to balance the speed of the app against functionality and resolution. 
• Flexibility- To have a global reach, your app must be available on all the three major operating systems- Android, iOS, and windows. Moreover, your app should seamlessly deal with different screen sizes and resolutions.
• Security- This feature is an absolute requirement for your app as it stores personal and sensitive information.
• Search option- This is an important feature where the user can search the app or the internet for business and social purposes.
• Push notifications- Whether text, graphic, or a combination of both, push notifications are personalized and targeted messages that interest the user. 
• Color Schemes- To give your app a professional yet stylish look, you need to pay attention to the color schemes
• User feedback- To make your app a success, feedback is crucial where you ask the user about the must-haves, addition, deletion, what to ignore, and where more work is needed.
• Updates- To bring in more relevancy to your mobile app, you need to send out updates regularly for improving the product quality. 

Wireframes

When you come up with your ideas to a leading mobile app development company, the mobile app developer provides a completely different image of your idea in terms of features, functionalities, and look and feel. 

This further helps in checking whether the client and the mobile app expert are on the same page or not in terms of idea. The wireframe provides an easy way to incorporate the feature and functionality changes. Wireframes ensure unwanted issues that are related to future problems regarding the functionalities in the future. 

Cost of developing a mobile app

While calculating the cost of mobile app development you need to have knowledge and a proper strategy about the mobile app development process. This will help in allocating the budget properly across all the stages of development. 

The various aspects that counts in mobile app development:

• App development
  • Outsourcing app development
  • Hiring mobile app developer
• App maintenance
• App updation
• App marketing

Your niche will decide your app budget, and also the type of app you want, the features, and the functionalities you want your app to have will add to the budget of your mobile app.

User experience

Your users are crucial in making your app a successful one. Either your app will make it big or will fail badly. If you fail to provide users an optimal user experience, your users won’t be coming back. 

The success in the digital landscape is all about how your users interact with your business through your app. A user experience defines the feel and look of your app and the engagement rate it offers with your business and services. 

User experience is all about the value it provides, ease of use, provisions for seamless integration with third-party providers, enhanced performance, speed, and effectiveness for your target audience. 

In a nutshell

There is no patent formula when it comes to choose the best framework for mobile app development. Choosing the best framework depends on your business requirements and challenges that your consumers are currently facing. The mobile app developers will focus on those challenges while developing the user-centric mobile app. Therefore, a framework that has great community support, fulfills the requirements, caters to the problems, assures security, and is flexible for future enhancements should be chosen.